APR 15 2018 | David the Fugitive S1E11 | 1 Samuel 30

Sea Change Church · David the Fugitive S1E11 · "1 Samuel 30" · Adam Stadtmiller · April 15, 2018
1 Samuel 30
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, I'm Noelle, I'm half Persian, half French, and I'm one of the new elders here. This is a scripture reading from 1 Samuel chapter 30. David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old.

They had killed none of them but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David's two wives had been captured, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel.

David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God. David fought them from dusk until the evening of the next day. And none of them got away except 400 young men who rode off on camels and fled. David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, including his two wives.

Nothing was missing, young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. David brought everything back. He took all the flocks and herds and his men drove them ahead of the other livestock, saying, This is David's plunder. Then David came to the 200 men who had been too exhausted to follow him and who were left behind at the Bezer Valley.

They came out to meet David and the men with him. As David and his men approached, he asked them how they were. But all the evil men and troublemakers among David's followers said, Because they did not go out with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered. However, each man may take his wife and children and go. David replied, No, my brothers, you must not do that with what the Lord has given us.

He has protected us and delivered into our hands the raiding party that came against us. Who will listen to what you say? The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike. David made this a statute and ordinance for Israel from that day to this. The word of the Lord.

Thanks, Noel. You rock star. So good. Well, good to have you. We are back in the journey with David. David is on the run. It is King David the fugitive. Anointed as king, but on the run and everything is against him. Saul, the king is against him. Slander is against him. His own men that he is leading are against him in this place when they want to stone him.

His thoughts are against him. Psalms has showed us as we've gone chronologically through each of the Psalms that are the back story. For the eight years that David was on the run. Eight years. Let me say that again. For the eight years that David was on the run, Psalms is a back story that we have gone through chronologically. If you want to look through 1 Samuel 21 through 31, you will see the fugitive years, these eight years.

And if you want to go to Google and search the chronological order of the Psalms, you can find the first link right there should show you the back story of what is going on with each of these. It will say this is the Psalm when David was fleeing from Saul. This is the Psalm when this was happening. What David learned in this grand epic narrative, because that's what it is.

A young boy anointed as king who never ran after that anointed purpose. David wasn't a man who ever spoke about I'm supposed to be king. You never see that. I should be this. This is the calling. Samuel himself anointed David. He was a king. He knew he was supposed to be who he was and whom he was supposed to be. But yet he never chased after that.

He chased continually after God. And now David is coming to the end of eight years on the run. Let me say that again. Eight years on the run. Maybe the three months that you've been struggling with something seems like an eternity to you. Others have been going two years, three years, five years. Maybe it's been a lifetime of something that's been there.

And one thing I want to say is that some nights are darker and longer than others. This is a truism. Some nights are darker and longer than others. But one thing is true for all nights. They are governed by the light. In Genesis, you will see that night itself has a governor that is over it. And it says that the sun and the moon and the stars are put over.

And the sun and the moon, especially in, excuse me, the moon and the stars, it says in Genesis, are a governor to govern the night. And so let me just give you this word of hope in perhaps your long, dark night of the soul. That God has a governor over that light. That you are not over that darkness. That you are not alone in that darkness. And that that darkness will be submissive and is submissive to the light.

The light shines in the darkness. And my favorite translation is that it says, but the darkness could not comprehend it. It had no ability. It's like teaching quantum physics or quantum math to a two-year-old. They have no understanding. They cannot overcome it. They cannot comprehend it. And in the midst of your darkness, some nights longer, like the Scottish night in the winter, some nights darker when it's a moonless night, and perhaps there's a cloud in the sky, that that night will subside and that the sun is always coming.

David was a student of darkness. Not on his own volition. Not as a creature of darkness. But David was a student of darkness because David was a strategist that knew that he needed to understand his enemy in order to leverage and gain a foothold against it. So many of us, we get into the night, or we get on the run, and we think the only way to survive is to run a little bit faster.

Running faster, as we found by David in the beginning of this sermon series, was not his strategy. David would go and find a stronghold to hold up in. A stronghold is a place of rest that makes you exponentially stronger because you've gone there where your 100 men and women who are fighting alongside you in the battle can come against 10,000, and they will suffer greater losses because of the unique position that you have put yourself in.

David understood the darkness. Jesus understood the darkness. And when Jesus was on the cross and the darkness came, Jesus understood that he would be rising from the dead and that the universe itself would bow to him and that one day there will be no more darkness. And let me remind you, if you have forgotten, in the midst of the darkness that you are dealing with and struggling with, that it has a governor and that you have the ability to harness the love of God and to become a student of that darkness, but not in agreement with that darkness.

David was a student of the darkness. And what we've learned about David is when David was on the run, he got stronger. He had a strategy and he used every time something came against him to get stronger, to get more strategic, and David never wasted a crisis. What are you doing with the crisis in your life as we look at this amazing man of God, David?

And so if you look in your notes, the first point in your notes, when calamity strikes, and calamity struck, they're away, they're doing their business, they come back, and the Amalekites have come and burned down their entire home and burned down all their dwellings. They have taken their entire family. Imagine if you come home and your home is burned down and your family's gone.

You don't know if they are dead or if they are alive because the custom of the day was generally to kill all the men and women when you sack a city like that and then take the plunder. Not only that, all the plunder is gone and David comes back and imagine coming over the ridge in the hell of near En Gedi or where he is and he looks over and sees smoldering.

Back in the thousand or so, 1500 years before Jesus' time, when you come back to your city and you see smoke and smoldering, it's not a good deal. And David comes upon calamity. When was the last time you have calamity? Calamity, it might have come this week. But what do you do when calamity comes? David had a strategy for calamity. He had a strategy and it was the same one.

Run to the house of the Lord. Know who you are and run to the house of the Lord and trust God to win your battles and obey. And so we see when calamity strikes, David had a decision to make. And every time calamity comes, you have a decision to make. David has a decision. Will David allow his victimization, because he was victimized here, to change his identity?

Now this is core. This is key to this entire Davidic fugitive series. Is if you were victimized, if you've been taken advantage of, do you allow that to seep down into the core of your identity? Or do you continue to harvest the truth of the knowledge that you are a child of God and that all things will work together for good? And that we don't lean into victimization.

Jesus was victimized, but God forbid that ever Jesus acted like a victim. Jesus never acted like a victim. Jesus on the cross, when he was being hurled insults at, when he was being whipped and scourged, never acted like a victim. That is the beautiful thing about Jesus. That is the beautiful thing about David. It was never poor me. It was never why me.

Or it was never leaning into victimization to see what you could leverage from it. Many people take on the identity of victimization and martyrdom so that they can have power and be the center stage person to complain, this is who I am. Everyone's against me. Not Jesus, not David, and hopefully not you. When calamity comes, you have a decision to make.

It says here that, will David allow his victimization to change his identity? Taking on a mantle, imagine like a mantle, like a cloak, a covering, and we can take on mantles. The scripture talks about a mantle of joy that Elijah, and Elijah, you know, passes his mantle on to Elisha, passes this mantle. Moses passes on a mantle of leadership to Joshua. And a great question is, who are you passing the mantle on to?

And has a mantle been passed on to you? There's a lot of men in this church I know, a lot of women in this church, who are passing mantles on to others, who want to say, this is something that I was given, now I want to give it to you. That's the core of discipleship. But he will not allow a mantle of victimization. Will he be taking on the mantle of victimization, or will he overcome victimization, and move into, and I underline this for a purpose, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual soul space of victory.

We all have space. You have emotional space, you have mental space, and you have a soul space that will be filled by whatever you allow into it. The enemy is always looking for a foothold on the wall of your life so that he can take a foothold to climb over the walls that God has put in protection that you have allowed, or perhaps he doesn't even need a foothold for you.

Perhaps you're so, you know, ingrained in bitterness at somebody that the devil doesn't need a foothold for you. You've left the castle gate open. It's wide open. And it's like, come in. And what he wants to do is get into the city walls and into the keep of your heart. Scripture says, guard your heart. Guard your heart from these things. And the enemy wants to get in, and he wants to turn you into a victim.

He wants to go and get into the quiet places of your heart and change your very being so that you no longer have the ability to overflow with joy, to overflow with peace, to overflow like David did on a regular basis with dancing before the Lord. We read this one more time. Will David allow his victimization to change his identity, taking on the mantle of victimhood?

Or will he overcome victimization and move into the physical, emotional, and spiritual soul space of victory? It's a question we all have when something happens, when things go awry. And so David goes from a place of strength to strength. If you look at your scripture there in Psalm 84, I think this psalm was written by the sons of Korah. But I could be wrong.

Just guessing. I could go to Pastor Jim as my resource. You probably know that one, right? You know all the sons of Korah by heart? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you've got it there. Good to see you, Linda, too. Good to have you in the front row. I'm glad you're healthy and feeling better and back and on your way. It says, they go from strength to strength. Or if you want to say it more of a British way, strength to strength, you know, or something like that.

So, strength to strength. So each appears before God in Zion. Does that scripture resemble you in the slightest? Like, is it from strength to weakness to weakness to kind of feeling okay to strength, have a strength day to weakness to weakness to four steps back, two steps forward? Or do you have a strategy in place that even though you're not feeling it, that you're moving to the house of the Lord, that you have a strategy that, hey, okay, the darkness has come.

I'm a student of the darkness. I'm not a creature of the darkness, but I study it. And I know that it is submissive and subservient, even though the darkness doesn't want you to know this, subservient to light. The darkness is a slave of the light. The entire cosmos of darkness, take as far as it goes, and the science says it's expanding, okay? If you were to get rid of all the sun, the moon, and the stars, and you have the entire cosmos of darkness, if I light a match, the match wins.

Have you ever thought about that? one of the things David did was when the darkness came, he went and lit matches. He was a spiritual arsonist. He would go and light fire. Light a fire under your soul or somewhere else if you need to. Just light a fire. That's how I get in trouble, Kai, saying stuff like that. Here's three things you can learn. I want you to leave here every week with tools, with equipment, with more than you can carry, so that on Wednesday you're still thinking about this.

On Thursday you are reaching into a toolbox that the Spirit of God and that the Word of God has given you. Here's three things. We're going to go through them quickly. To keep moving from strength to strength when the darkness comes. First of all, David keeps a loose grip on all things, not God. I'm not sure that that's great English, but I really like it. David keeps a loose grip on all things, not God.

Number two, David trusted God to protect him on all fronts. 360 degree view. And number three, David risked himself for the liberation of others. It's a great point because when some people, one of the problems with victimization is you can draw a crowd of helpers and that you can draw a crowd of people who want to surround you and find it their mission to, you know, sometimes keep you in your victimization.

You can do that, but very few victims have the ability to liberate others. David, when he was victimized, Jesus, the ultimate hero, while he was being victimized, in the midst of it was bringing victory to others. Tweet that. That's solid. Think about it. Jesus on the cross, in the midst of victimization, the world's against me, the world, why me, why, ah, no, in the midst of his victimization, Jesus was bringing life to others.

I gotta say, when it gets dark, I mean, do you just go into your little dark soul space, Gollum's cave, look at the little ring of your own oppression, oh, woe is me, woe is me, I'm not saying that we don't empathize with your difficulty, but you can do two things. You can focus on the brokenness, and sometimes, look, we need to take a deep dive and look at our brokenness.

There are times for that, but it's a strategic decision. That's different than letting, just being overwhelmed by the darkness and woe is me. Jesus, being overwhelmed by the darkness, was crucified and the midst of it was releasing others through the power of God. That's powerful. That's the difference between people that act like victims and people that are victimized that walk in victory.

David's a liberator. Keep moving. Here's the first point. Turn your notes over. David keeps a loose grip on everything but God. Did you correct that for me, Chris? Because it was not God. You probably did, didn't you? Nonetheless, David keeps a loose grip on everything. She edits the messages. Keep my poor English there from now on. I think actually it works.

He keeps a loose grip. How tight is your grip? Remember I came home when I was, I think I was married a week, and I came home and my wife's car was in front of the house and my house was on fire. I'd been married like a half of a week. It was a bad feeling, okay? That's not a good feeling. The house was smoldering. I thought a pipe had blown. I didn't know, you know, I was newly married.

I didn't know if my wife was inside. Obviously, she was not inside. She came up afterwards, burnt the house down, and it was my fault that the house burned down. And I remember just being gripped with fear because I was thinking about all the possessions and all the things. And one of the things that will give you freedom is keeping a loose grip on everything that is not God, except your family, except your friendships, except your honesty, except your integrity.

Those things, obviously, we hold on to. But on all this material stuff, I always ask myself the question, could I just, you know, could I give my house away? If somebody asked me for my car and I knew it was God, you know, no matter how much equity you have in your place, could you just give it away? You know, there's a lot of Christians, a lot of non-Christians that have done that, but a lot of believers that have just been willing to say, this means nothing to me.

Can you just walk on, perhaps you have that blog you've always wanted and you've got a million, two million followers or whatever it is, and you're just getting all the accolades that come with that or perhaps you're a sports star, perhaps you're just hashtag winning. You are the best at everything. And God says, I want you to walk, drop the keys and go.

Can you do it? That's freedom. That's one of the abilities to not be worried. What if I lose my job? What if this happens? What if, so what? And, I have a God that loves me. This is David's soul space. David could walk and he proved it. He walked on the kingdom multiple times. Twice. Twice. He just walked when Absalom came against him. When Saul came against him and told me, I'll tell you what, he could have brought up a rebellion against Saul and, and, and beaten Saul.

He had people that would sing his praises. The young maidens would sing. Well, Saul killed his thousands, but David, he's killed his tens of thousands. He could have raised up. He was better looking. He was better well known. He had killed bigger giants. He didn't hide in the luggage. He played great music. The ladies loved him. The warriors wanted to come beside him.

He could have taken it all, but he didn't. He walked. That's the question. How tight are you holding on to the things that don't matter? If you want stress, can you walk? That's, that's what I want. I want to look at everything I have. When I got married, I could fit everything in the back of my truck. Okay? That, I'm, I'm 48 now. That's changed. Big time. I just ask myself, Lord, whatever you want, I'm just loose change in your pocket.

I hold it all loosely. I hold my family tightly. I want to hold my integrity tightly. I want my word, my kids. I want to hug deeply. I want to live life in its boldest. I want to embrace life. Those are the things I want to hold on to. David could let it all go, and he wasn't terrified to do it, and he left on his own more than once, and he proved it.

I'm going to say nothing. This is, nothing has given, I won't say nothing, I don't be that definitive. Few things have given me more peace than trying to follow Christ and David in this way. That if there's five things I try to live my life by, five core principles, one of them is this, hold everything loosely but God. Be able to walk. Be able to walk on the job, be able to walk on the position, be able to walk on the books, be able to walk on the, whatever it is you get from your little deal, the little kingdom you've created.

Can you walk when God says, let's go? I remember there was that movie with Val Kilmer, I forgot what it was called, but the whole thing was at a moment's notice, you had to, you had to just walk. You had to leave. It was called speed, I think. Maybe that's what it was called. What was it called? Heat. That's right, heat. That's right. Thank you, Sean. That's good to have elders in the back, right?

I'm not recommending the movie, okay? So, I watched the edited version on an airplane. David returns to find every material possession of he owns, stolen or destroyed. David's heart was never tied to plunder. They'd attack Ziklag and burned it. David easily leaves kingdoms. He does it twice in his reign. Keep following down the notes. I love this. When you know who anointed you as king, you don't need to fight to maintain your crown.

Man, Samuel was long gone. His boy Samuel, who poured the oil, that horn of oil when he was a baby, when he was a kid, not a baby, when he was like 13 years old or 12 or whatever he was, was long gone. And now he's hiding in the crags of the wild goats. It's cold. He's got miserable dudes beside him. You can see they wanted to stone him. It says that the rebel rousers followed him as well.

And so he has this great mighty men that follow him, but he also has these destitute, and it says that he became their captain. And I got to say that the calling of being God's anointed king over Israel looked mighty thin at that point. When the men, as it says, and I think I put it in bold right here, no, I didn't, but they wanted to stone him because of this.

And maybe someone wants to stone you. You don't, when you know who anointed you as king, you don't need to fight to maintain your crown. You know what the elders do in heaven with their crowns? They take them off, and they throw them at the feet of Jesus, and then they fall down on their face, and they worship Jesus. And then they stand back up, and they get their crown, and then they look at Jesus, and they take their crown off, and they throw it at Jesus' feet, and they fall down, and they bow for over and over and over.

Maybe you've heard the band casting crowns. That's what it's about. So, maybe that little crown you have, maybe it's time to throw that down. There's a lot of peace in casting crowns. What would it look like to reboot everything? What would it look like? Just reboot it all. The mortgage, everything. Sell it all. Just whatever. I don't know what God's called.

I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not telling you to go live on the Isle of Iona. You know, although you could. It's a good little monastery there if you want. And David, he shared his crowns, and he shared his plunder. Look at this. And David, in verse 20, in verse 20, it says this. Now, they were going to stone him, but now David's coming back. And whose plunder does it say it is in verse 20?

It says, this is David's plunder. You know, he went out, and then all of a sudden, he becomes richer because of his victimization. He actually gets more because he knew what to do with it. And what is so interesting is he doesn't hold on to the plunder, which he could have, and most kings did in those days. He said, no, we will share with the others, constantly giving his life away, constantly giving his power away.

I guess if God's called you in a position of power, and he wants to use you there, hold it lightly, but be willing to give it away. Be willing to pass the ball. Be willing to make those around you brighter, faster, stronger than you, more willing to just knowing who is giving you your crown, and who you are, and bring others into the kingdom. This is what David did.

Number two. So the first one was David keeps a loose grip on everything. Let it go. Two, David trusted God to protect him on all fronts. David is under threat from his companions. And I got to say, how quickly our companions can become our foes. If you've been in church a long time, you know how quickly companions become foes. As a youth pastor, I was in two church splits, and I was in this little youth group that was just watching it happen from the sidelines.

And I learned a lot. And I learned that they can love you. But when they come, they come at night with pitchforks and torches and be ready to go. That's what I learned. And that might sound, I see some people who've been in ministry here a while, smiling at me. I know them. I've seen the best fall. And not because of anything on their own. Things just didn't go right.

And maybe you have too. And this isn't, and if you're in the kingdom of God, it doesn't matter because you know who gave you your crown. But you can't, if you start putting your personal worth in the position that God has given you, that one day God might just say, hey, you need to go to the back row again. Are we just willing to go to the back row?

Have you ever seen anybody try to hold on to their kingdom once the anointing was gone? Read about Saul. David watched it. I'm not saying people are bad. I'm not saying they're horrible. I'm just saying that even Jesus says, I don't trust in man. I don't put my trust in them. Because I know what? Do you know what it says? What's in their hearts? And so if you're going to do ministry, if you're going to do life, what is the reason you're doing it for?

And are you doing it for Jesus? Because in the end, that's all that's going to matter. Good and faithful servant. And it's a powerful thought. David knew, and they came for him. It says, that says, how quickly, in verse six, David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit because his sons and daughters, but David found strength in the Lord of his God.

His Lord is God. See, David knew who fights his battles, but it might've been a kind of a unique time, right? And maybe you've been the one when the stones have been picked up and they're all focused on you. What do you do? David trusted God to protect him. David's family was under threat from his enemies. Not only was he going to be stoned, his wife, Abigail, and his other wife were gone and they were taken away.

And it says, David recovered everything because he surrendered to God for his protection. And if you look in your notes there, there's one thing that I wrote. It says, nothing surrendered to God is devoid of his protection. This is true. Everything you surrender to God is under his protection. And if somebody takes it from you, God helped them. I have a friend in Chile and he had this, he runs a YWAM base down there and this, they had this big, they had a burlesque bar down there and they had this big burlesque bar and they had this big festival that was coming into town and they were going to have all these, you know, strippers and this whole crazy thing in the city.

Well, it happened to be the same weekend that he was having his evangelistic crusade. And so, he didn't think anything of it and he went and they passed out and nobody went to the strip club thing. Actually, they had this amazing event and the strip club lost all this money. They lost tons of money. So, it's, it's, where they are, there's a little bit of corruption.

And so, the, the woman who owned the strip club went to the city council and sued him for, yeah, I don't know what they would sue him for but that he ruined the event and he had to pay $10,000 to this woman. This isn't me, but he goes to her and so this guy's heavy, he's awesome, but he goes to her and he takes $10,000 in cash to her that he has to take to her and he goes to her door and he goes, I want you to know that this money was given to the church for orphans and widows and if you take it, the curse of God is upon it, but you can have it.

That's awesome, right? That night, there was a knife fight in her bar. Guy was murdered in the bar and the next day it burnt down. Not saying, just saying. She came back three days later, asked to be forgiven and gave him the money. If you know who owns your stuff, you're going to worry about it. Heavy story, right? I don't usually tell those stories, but that was awesome.

We're riding in a car, he told me that story. I was like, oh, that's so awesome. I was riding through Chile in the back roads and he told me that story. He's got a hundred others just like it, but he lives in a different domain than I do. You know, that's the interesting thing, you know. Do you trust God with all your stuff? If someone sues you and wants to take all your money, like, do you realize that it's not yours anyways?

I'm not saying give it away, I'm not saying we don't use the things we have, but like, how much are you clinging on to it? You just sit here. God's got it. And then the final thing here, not only that, by the way, when he got plunder back, he not only got everything, David not only got everything that was taken from him back, but they had raided all the Philistine towns before this, so he got all their plunder too.

So when David went back, he went back with everything that was his, plus multiple cities of plunder. Like, God's like, oh, here's some extra stuff, thanks for trusting me again, David. And every time David trusts, David wins. Every single time, let it go. The final thing is we come in for a landing today. David risked himself for the liberation of others. I know the word, liberation is not rescue.

There's a huge, huge difference in my opinion. I'm jumping again, I'm going to stand on the pulpit. There's a huge difference between rescue and liberation. Some people, life is to continually be rescued over and over again. And they have a group of actors around them that play the part and rescue them over. And oh, I'm in trouble again, rescue me. I'm in trouble again, rescue me, rescue me.

And then there's other people who are liberators, who once they rescue you, they teach you the waves of liberation that you never need to be rescued again. That's a liberator. Now David was not a rescuer, David was a liberator. And David liberated people into freedom. And there was a huge difference. And if you have made a life of being a rescuer, I want to say, can you take your super person cape off and become a liberator for once?

Because if the people that you are rescuing come over and over to you again to be rescued for the same thing, maybe it's time to stop rescuing them so that they can be liberated. And there's a thing called codependence. Look it up. Read about it. There's a thing where we need to say as a church, we want to liberate people. I want liberated people around here that I don't have to keep liberating or keep rescuing the same person over and over again.

Galatians 5.1 said, it is for freedom. This is this, God doesn't repeat himself because, you know, he's a bad linguist. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. There's one thing to let someone out of a cell so they can go out and keep being in bondage with all their chains. It's another thing to let someone out of a cell to teach them how to live in freedom outside of the cell.

And there are so many people, and maybe it's you and sometimes it's me, that I get out of the cell and I walk around in so much bondage to fear, anxiety, doubt, worry, whatever it is, that I'm not free after I've been set free. It is for the sake of freedom that Christ set you free. It doesn't say Christ set you free. It said it is for freedom that he has set you free, and are you walking in freedom?

Do you know you've been set free, but what will it take to get off of the bondage? Liberators want nothing from the ones that they set free. I love that. Liberators don't want anyone from the one they set free. You know what I see in, and I'm apolitical here. I don't bring up politics. I don't tell you who to vote for. I just talk about Jesus. I'll let you figure that out.

But one of the things I see in politics is finding people that need to be rescued, rescuing them, keeping them as victims, and then wanting their vote in return. That's not liberation. That's rescue so you can stay in power, and I won't say what I want to call it, but that is not liberation. Liberation sets you free, and it says, vote as you wish. Liberation is setting people free from Christ, going in and doing the things that set orphans, that set widows free, and saying, I'm offering Christ to you, but if you don't accept Christ, I'm still going to love you.

We're still going to care for you. We're still going to give our own blood, our own sweat, and our own tears if you never turn towards Jesus, if we have nothing to offer us. That is liberation, and that is rescue, and liberators never want anything in return. David wanted nothing from his followers, and when he left every time, he never called anybody to go with him.

He never invited them. He didn't invite people to go. He went by himself, and you remember, he left Jonathan when he went. Do you want something from the people you're setting free? Do they have to give you this or give you that, or they get the guilt trip? They get the little power play? Or can you just liberate people so that they can be free? That's scary, liberator.

That's the kind of liberation that's difficult. I want to say, be a liberator. Christ didn't set you free. You know, he's not a micromanager. Sometimes I wish he would be. He allows the world way too much freedom, but it is for freedom that he has set you free. Final thing, liberators are free from bondage. It's nearly impossible to be a true liberator if you're not truly free.

What has you in bondage? They promise them freedom. Ah, this, I just want to put this on the headlines. If you could read the news, I'm on a news fast again, so I'm not listening to the news. It's just toxic to my soul. 1 Peter 2, 19. But if you can read the, John Stott said, read the news with the Bible in one hand. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.

That's such a powerful, I mean, you could lean into that for a while. He's talking about these false people that are promising Christ, but they're not, they're wanting something from, the Pharisees wanted something from all their followers. They wanted power. They wanted something. Can you give and want nothing in return? That is unconditional, unlimited love.

They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them. What's defeating you? What are you a slave to? It is for freedom you've been set free. And, you know, come on, let's just be honest. Do you really want to be free? I mean, come on. Do you, I mean, or is one leg shackle good? Like, I'm good, Jesus.

It's just a, it's just a leg shackle. It's only a 10 pound weight. I mean, at least not the 20 pound weight that that guy's got. I disagree. I mean, just be honest. Do you really want to be free? That's the question. I'm getting to the point where I think I want to be free, but I'm not sure. I don't know if the rest of you want to be that honest, but I think I want to be free.

And I keep praying, God, get me to the place where I want to be free, where I'm bored of the world and all it has to offer. Amen? Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. ...